


Slumdog Millionaire by MarkWShulkin

by MarkWShulkin



Category: Slumdog Millionaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 01:26:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3190655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkWShulkin/pseuds/MarkWShulkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Movie review</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slumdog Millionaire by MarkWShulkin

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

  
“ What will YOu do with Yourself in your impending retirement?”,  
Interrogates the BW (Beautiful Wife), who’d really prefer that I  
continued working.  
“Well, I’ll go to movies and maybe get a job as a movie  
reviewer for a weekly newspaper or a monthly magazine”, I  
fantasize defensively..  
“ But your movie reviews are limited to character studies  
and psychodynamics. All those years in a dimly lit consulting room  
listening to nervous people hasn’t aught you anything about acting,  
about directing, about photography. You’ve got a lot to learn  
about movie reviewing.” The BW correctly critiques.

I counterattack with, “Who do you suggest I ask about how to learn those things?”  
And then silence.

 

Slumdog Millionaire is the tragi-comic story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old Muslim orphan from the 1980’s predominantly  
Hindu slums of Mumbai (Bombay).

We meet him in what should be the biggest day of his life.  
With the whole nation watching, he is just one  
question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India¹s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”  
Interestingly, he’s not excited about it.  
But when the show breaks for the night, the police arrest  
and torture him, accusing him of cheating. How could a street kid know so much?  
Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal flashbacks us  
to a painful multi-layered story of his life in the slums where he and his brother, Samil, grew up.  
We learn that their mother was murdered as the boys narrowly escaped from a violent anti-Muslim attack by Hindu extremists He shares with us their adventures as homeless beggars on the streets of 1980 Bombay, (though it could be a ghetto anywhere).  
And there are vicious encounters with local gangs, during  
which they take on Latika, a girl also an abandoned child.  
They speak of themselves as the three  
Musketeers, but eventually Latika gets separated from them.

There’s a touch of humor as the boys are taken under the  
wing of a Fagan-like sadist entrepreneur who teaches them to bilk foreign sight see-ers, while pretending to be tourist guides. They fake stories about well known tourist attractions that are more imaginative than the facts..

What fun contrasting the Eastern philosophy with a  
Western style Game show that is based on materialism at  
its worst.. What better villain than the game  
show’s crafty scheming moderator who tries with each question to confront the contestant with greed for wealth and with the fear of losing it all.  
The film’s crisis plays out after a lavatory scene  
where he gives Jamil the “wrong” answer to the million rupee question. Will Jamal go along with this crookedness and lose everything.?..  
.  
The flashbacks often clue you in to how he gets the  
game show¹s multiple choice answers to its difficult questions. But not every answer to the questions has been learned from life experience.

There is no facile script writing in this movie.  
Some times Jamil uses the ” lifeline”, polls the  
audience, or just makes a lucky guess. Does some  
unknown power guide his continuing to be a contestant on  
the show?

There’s a couple of other questions for movie go-er  
to answer if he’’s to get value received for the ticket price. Like ,.  
“What is this young man with no education and  
no apparent desire for riches, doing on the game show?  
and  
“ Why does he have so little feeling about whether  
he wins or loses the money ?”  
Suddenly it comes to you as the end of the movie  
approaches and you “get”:it. He doesn’t care about  
money to move up in the caste system, He’s not  
interested in a life of luxury. You suddenly feel  
“uplifted” as you realize that this is a love story  
to end all love stories. As we understand why he  
manipulated getting on the show and what he really  
had to gain, we discover a truism about our own lives.

  
This story is about “Everyman” and Everycountry” past or present.. Jamal’s story stands in bold contrast to his brother Samil’s aggressive style. Perhaps we need a little understanding of Eastern philosophy to fully appreciate the brilliance of the movie.

If I were to meet a Zen Master on the street and to  
ask him where to apply to learn to become a Zen Master,  
he would greet me with silence. He has long  
forgotten the process. He just lives a life that has  
divine truth in it, a life that has transcended  
the mind-body separation.. He eats when he is hungry,  
sleeps when he is tired, and he has no wish to acquire  
material goods which are only transient and have no  
meaning to him now or in the after life. God guides  
him in truths about the meaning and purpose of life”.  
A Zen Master is not at one with God, He is at one with Nature., His exhilaration is in transcending  
the travails of society, of material possessions, and of malfunction or painful body sensations.

Does it matter !! the story was only pretending  
to be about wealth versus poverty, about good versus evil?.

Was it a story about lessons learned in the  
school of hard knocks (read torture)? I think it was  
a love story! A subtle love story that contrasted  
Jamil’s unending search for his childhood “true love”  
with his brother’s vacuous struggle with reality.  
Latika,, a truly beautiful actress by the way, is Jamal’s  
“truth” and purpose in his life,  
Re-uniting with her was for him the promise of being at  
one with Nature.

  
 


End file.
